Natural Dye Plants
Madder Compost
The sock yarn below was dyed not exactly on a compost heap but in buckets of left over dye stuffs that were left in the sun for a few weeks.
It was a continuation of the use of the home-grown madder written about in the previous article Madder and Madder.
The madder in question had already been used to dye over one and a half times it weight, however because the madder was quite coursely chopped I could see both from the wool dyed and the madder that was left over that the red pigments had not yet been fully released from the roots.... moreOnion Skins
The humble onion skin can be very versitile when it comes to natural dyeing, producing with a good alum mordant and modifiers a wide range of yellows, oranges and browns.
Living in France, it is easy to collect onion skins with the help of my neighbours, I have a good supply of organic onion skins to keep me going all year round. I just keep them in a paper sack in a dry place until needed.
I have heard it said that if the onion skins are kept too long they don't dye so well, but I haven't noticed that much even when using old onion skins.... moreWeld
The first weld plants are beginning to ripen. Here is a picture of some hanging up to dry.
Weld is the plant on the right, the other is flax for linen thread. Flax is growing like a weed in the hay pastures this year, where last year there was none. The shutter by the way is painted with woad.
The weld plant is ready for harvest just before the flower shoot really gets going. Here the buds are still tight and the plant is still relatively compact, if left to grow they would probably have shot another foot or so.... moreMadder Harvest
After four years of tending and weeding, the time has finally arrived to harvest the first madder root from the dye garden.
Due to the wet autumn it has been difficult to judge the right time to harvest, as the foliage is still green and there are new root shoots.
However the arrival of my brother-in-law on 'holiday' heralded that the time was ripe, and with his help we harvested the madder patch.
Each day we dug out a few kilos of madder roots and he washed them before drying. As the week went on he perfected a washing method which involved rotating his hand like an old-fashioned washing machine. Finally all was out of the earth, washed and hanging to dry in the barn. Thank you Jan Kees!... moreCochineal Exhausts
The Exhausting Pursuit of Pale Pink
Exhaust is the name given in dyeing to the leftover dye baths. So once you have dyed a batch of wool what you have left over in the vat is called first exhaust. Once you have dyed something in this you have the 2nd exhaust left.
With this in mind I set out to dye pale pink!
I needed quite a lot of dark crimson pink Cherry Coloured Twist sock weight yarn for the new pattern by Ysolda Teague being launched in the next issue of Twist Collective , so I started with a strong cochineal dye bath. As I need a lot of the dark pink I wanted my first exhaust to be as dark as the original dye bath.... moreMadder and Madder
Lots of you have asked how I would process the madder harvested last year.
Well, it has dried very well, hanging in my neighbours' barn and was only brought inside just as the cyclone arrived last January. I wasn't going to risk my madder being blown away! It had dried so well that it was possible to snap it into smaller pieces, but not small enough.
I have saved this home grown madder for this Autumn's sock collection not only because I have heard that madder needs to mature for a year but also I thought that Jan Kees deserves a pair of madder dyed handed knitted socks after all the hard digging and washing he did last year.... moreWalnuts
In our coffee breaks, Fleur, our border colley and I go walnut-hunting in the garden and surrounding meadows. This is the time of year that the slowly ripening nuts fall one by one from the already yellowing trees. Leaving the green husked youngsters on the trees we collect the black wizened ones from the dappled shade beneath. The walnuts in the photo are fully ripe and ready to harvest for dyeing purposes.
Once collected I leave them to dry and then wearing rubber gloves unless I want to sport very tanned hands for a week or two, I separate the husks from the nuts. Stored in a dry place husks will keep indefinitely. Green husks can also be used, but it is easier to separate and dry the ones that have already been taken half way there by nature.... moreColourful Sorghum
Sorghum was one of the dye plants I grew last year. It grew very well on our dry southern slope. One night the wild boar came to invest it and pulled some down.
They neither ate it or returned, no doubt knowing at the first sniff that it is poisonous. Unfortunately, this year I didn't have time to work with this fascinating plant, but I have kept some seed and plan to sew it this year as a combined dye crop, shade and wind break. It is very drought resistent, its leaves contract around the stem conserving moisture as they dry.... moreSunflowers
Sunflowers have been used for centuries, if not millennium by the Hopi Indians to dye a range of reds, purples and blues. This summer has been especially good for growing sunflowers anywhere in Europe.
These de-flowered seed heads below are a variety called Van Gogh. As you can see the wonderful whirl of seeds are purple when young, turning to purply black as they mature. Although all the seeds I sowed looked the same, some plants have grown with several flower heads to each plant these having the purple natural dye producing seeds shown below.... moreWoad
This is a single woad plant ( pastel in French) flowering in my garden here in the Ariege. Strange is it not that a plant that dyes so blue should have such yellow flowers? I have removed nearly all the other plants as I do not know how invasive it is, but this one I will let go to seed, to sow in August for plants for next year.
Near Pamiers on the road to Pujols there was a field of woad/pastel that has just been harvested as the seeds were ripening. A whole field of purple teardrops which are now on their way to the pharmaceutical industry. For natural dyeing the plants are cut when the leaves are ripe, from June through to September.... moreMadder Plants
This madder is only a few months old, in 2-3 years it will have covered all the ground and the roots will be ready to harvest that Autumn.
Madder seems to grow well in this area of France, where the summers are hot but not too dry. There has been a recent attempt to grow it in Provence which was abandoned, I think because of lack of water.
However in Holland where madder was grown traditionally, a new company was launched last month called Rubia. If you are looking for madder extract it is worth looking at their site.... more